


Falling in at Night

by theskywasblue



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Family, Gen, Homesickness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-18
Updated: 2011-05-18
Packaged: 2017-10-19 13:57:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/201625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theskywasblue/pseuds/theskywasblue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>For the prompt "Missing"</p>
    </blockquote>





	Falling in at Night

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt "Missing"

Sam has never had a room of his own.

Hell, he was lucky when he had a chance to have a _bed_ of his own and didn't have to wake up tangled in Dean's arms and legs or get kicked or elbowed in the middle of the night; so when he walks into his dorm room and discovers that it's a single – that he doesn't have a roommate, doesn't have to share with _anyone_ – it’s almost too much to handle. He drops his duffel, which is badly tattered, stained with things he can't even bother to identify anymore, and smells faintly of dirt and more definitely of gunpowder, in the middle of the floor and just _stares_.

It's his, all of it – the twin bed pushed against one wall, the bookshelf opposite, the desk underneath the window with its little roller chair, the tiny coffee table on its rickety-looking wheels, and the uncomfortable-looking armchair too small to accommodate the six-foot, four-inch frame he's just barely grown into – it’s _his_. He doesn't have to move himself inside the orbit of another human being for the first time in his entire life, and there's something inside him that just wants to lie down on the floor and roll around, revelling in the excess of _space_.

He sits on the edge of the bed for a while – the mattress is sealed up inside a protective plastic cover and it crackles a little under his butt – and waits until the impulse passes, measuring out on the wall the little spots he can see where the oils from adhesives holding up posters of students past have discoloured the paint ever-so-slightly.

Finally, the jittery, joyful, panicked thing in his chest settles, and he starts unpacking. His wardrobe (and Dean would laugh, he thinks, to hear Sam call it that; the thought makes something in his belly twist) feels disgustingly inadequate compared to the other people he saw wandering around campus – all long pants and heavy shirts, nothing stylish, nothing even _new_ ; he's going to stick out like a sore fucking thumb, and the thought makes him panic. He wants to fit in, he wants to be normal.

That doesn't stop him from tucking the silver knife under the bed, his Browning HP under the pillow – he doesn't pause, _doesn't_ , to run his fingers over the custom grip or to think about how much of his pool winnings Dean had to squirrel away to pay for it, a gift for his eighteenth birthday – and he has a moment where he wonders if the dining hall has a salt shaker he sneak back for the windows.

He's not doing these things anymore, he tells himself. He wants to be normal, wants it so bad that it _hurts_.

He doesn't have any trouble falling asleep that night – after so many years spent in beds that are never his own, he’s never had the luxury of insomnia – but he wakes suddenly in the middle of the night with the wall at his back and his arm hanging off the side of the bed with nothing, no one in between, no warmth next to him, no sensation of Dean's breath on the back of his neck, no sound of his dad snoring on the other side of the room and realizes that he has no idea where they are, his family for better or worse, he just _doesn't know_.

He digs his fingers into the pillow, squeezes his eyes shut to trap the prickling sensation behind the lids, and reminds himself that he wanted this, that he _wants_ this.

It's a long time before he falls asleep again.

-End-


End file.
